The Peruvian Adventure, Part 4: From Cuzco to Lima
As we took the bus back from Ollantaytambo, I barely contained my excitement about being back in relative civilization in Cuzco. With service back on my phone, for much the three-hour drive to the Hotel Prisma, I was fixated on the little blue dot of our location, slowly approaching our destination, in the Google Maps app.
I couldn’t have been more relieved to see the pale, yellow light of the street awning and dusty peach tiles of the lobby. I nearly screamed with delight when my roommate Celia and I got to our room and I got to sit on a clean toilet with a bowl and take a hot shower. All this was in total contrast to how I felt the last time I was at the hotel only days before: anxious about cramming my duffel and meeting my group for the Inca Trail and frustrated that the hotel refused to exchange some of my American currency on account of some tiny rips on my bills.
After checking in and dropping our bags off in our rooms, we returned downstairs to give back our Inca Trail duffels and say goodbye to our “Family” from the last few days. We took a picture together, said farewell to our tour leader, Victor, and made our plans for the evening.
Celia and I went with two of the couples to a restaurant in town called Organika, which sourced all of its food out of an organic farm in the Sacred Valley. The dishes were delicious and had these lovely little edible flowers adorning them, but we were all so tired that we could barely keep our heads up and out of the food, especially since we had woken up at 2:45 AM that morning to begin our trek to Machu Picchu.
Our initial plan had been to go to the JW Marriott in Cuzco for drinks that night (Peruvian champagne, per the recommendation of my coworker), but we decided to call it a night after dinner. Celia and I and one of the other couples ended up heading there for breakfast the following morning instead. It was the best money I would spend all trip — llama keyrings and mini pisco bottles excepted. They had a whole gluten-free corner, and there were even some vegetables in it (quinoa with sauteed broccoli, cauliflower, and tomato). After days of white, fried, foods, I was thrilled to eat some plants. Afterward, Celia and I hit up a souvenir market (she got sunglasses and some socks, I got more llama keychains) and then we said our farewell and I called an uber to the airport for my flight from Cuzco to Lima.
The flight was uneventful but getting to Lima proper was far from it. Getting on the Wifi bus I’d paid for to take me from the airport to Miraflores, Lima, was more of a struggle than I had anticipated. First of all, I had been under the impression that the bus ran every half hour, but in fact it ran every hour. Because I had gotten my suitcase off the baggage carousel at 4:05PM, I was late for the 4PM bus. In the end, this was probably a good thing because it would take me almost a half hour to verify my online reservation with an associate and figure out the departure area for the bus: there were no signs that made it remotely clear from where the bus would leave. Eventually, one of the disgruntled employees was kind enough to direct me to an area behind an airport hotel where this bus was supposed to depart. Luckily, the 5:00PM bus was already there and I was able to board it early and take advantage of the Wi-fi and air conditioning. I still was dressed for the cool, rainy weather of Cuzco and the Inca Trail, and hadn’t changed into clothing better suited toward Lima’s beachy climate. Even more luckily, one of the bus stops was directly in front of my hotel, the JW Marriott Lima.
After checking in, which took more time than expected on account of some very demanding guests ahead of me, I was taken to my room by a friendly bilingual bellhop. Once he helped me get settled in my room, seeing a bathtub in my room, I eagerly drew a hot bath and tore open the complimentary Peruvian bath salts next to the usual hotel offerings of shampoo, conditioner, soap, and body lotion. It was heavenly.
After bathing, I cozied up in a bathrobe and took a moment to take in the view of the beach and the outdoor mall, Larcomar, at sunset: the scene, though new to me, looked like a familiar combination of Copacabana and Miami Beach.
After taking in the view, I eagerly opened my bag and packed away all my dirty Inca Trail laundry, exchanging my thermal layers and hiking boots for a sundress and sandals.
I found it hard to leave the room but knew I’d regret not doing some exploring of Lima, since it was unlikely I’d get the chance to (or have enough energy to) walk around when in Lima after the wedding and before catching my flight home. So I fortified myself with some ceviche from the hotel restaurant and my very first Pisco Sour of the trip.
Blame it on the altitude changes or blame it on the fact that I’m a relative lightweight, that Pisco Sour hit me hard. Before I knew it, I went from ambling around Larcomar to wandering the streets near JFK Park in Miraflores. In the next two hours, I had consumed some drunken munchies of coconut gelato, a lucuma popsicle, and a bag of puffed corn cereal from a local supermarket.
The thing I remember most from my tipsy stroll though was the pain of loneliness — after so many nights of being in such close proximity to people and in the now-familiar embrace of nature on the Inca Trail, being suddenly surrounded by the the steel and strangers of the city was a jarring change.
Perhaps I was especially sensitive given that I was attending a wedding the following day, but I found myself hyper-attuned to the fact that everyone in the city seemed to be with someone — a significant other, a family member, or a group of friends. I was an American woman, somewhat newly single, and very much alone. I called my mom later that night when I got back to my hotel and after she reminded me about setting my clock forward for Daylight Savings Time (which they do not observe in Peru), I fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke up at 5, my body still on an Inca Trail hiking “jet lag”, and hauled myself to the hotel gym for a short workout. My leg was still hurting a little, but it felt good to have a moment of indulging in the routine I’d otherwise follow on a Sunday in Boston: doing some weight training at the gym and then having a nice brunch. I was sad that the weather in Lima today was more reminiscent of San Francisco on a foggy summer day than a great beach day, but it didn’t bother me too much, since by 9:00AM, I had to board a shuttle bus to get me to the reason I’d ended up in Peru in the first place: the wedding.
